Taboo – Production Begins On BBC One & FX Period Drama

Taboo, a major eight-episode drama series created by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, Locke) and directed by Kristoffer Nyholm (Danish TV series The Killing, The Enfield Haunting) for BBC One and FX, is to start filming in London this week starring Tom Hardy in the lead role alongside a major international cast.
Taboo will star Hardy as James Keziah Delaney who returns to 1814 London after 10 years in Africa to discover that he has been left a mysterious legacy by his father. Driven to wage war on those who have wronged him, Delaney finds himself in a face-off against the East India Company, while playing a dangerous game between two warring nations – Britain and America.

Alongside Hardy’s protagonist James Keziah Delaney is Michael Kelly (House of Cards, Everest), who plays American doctor Dumbarton, Jonathan Pryce (Pirates Of The Caribbean, Brazil) as Sir Stuart Strange, the head of the East India Company and Delaney’s nemesis, Oona Chaplin (The Crimson Field, The Hour) as Zilpha Geary James’s half-sister, and David Hayman (Macbeth, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) as Brace, Delaney’s trusted man-servant.

Polly Hill, Controller BBC Drama commissioning says: “The talent on- and off-screen is incredible and I am so excited to see Steve’s captivating scripts come to life. Tom Hardy and the rest of the cast are set to bring this original and spectacular story to life in a unique and epic way.”

Ridley Scott’s Scott Free London and Tom Hardy’s Hardy Son & Baker are producing for BBC One and FX, with Sonar Entertainment distributing worldwide outside the UK. Executive producers are Ridley Scott and Kate Crowe for Scott Free, Tom Hardy and Dean Baker for Hardy Son & Baker, and Steven Knight, with Timothy Bricknell (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, The Fear) producing. Taboo is based on an original story by Tom Hardy and his father, Chips Hardy, who is also the show’s consulting producer. The series was commissioned by Charlotte Moore, Controller of BBC One.

Tom Hardy’s credits include The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, and Warrior. He most recently played the lead role in Mad Max: Fury Road, in Brian Helgeland’s Legend playing both Kray Twins, and opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant.